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NEWS / MONDAY, JANUARY 25. 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
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EDUCATION
Program attracts future engineers
Colin Dietz presents a model of the potential future metropolis his group designed to the panel of judges for the Great Plains Region Future City Competition. The University uses this competition as a means of recruiting future students for the School of Engineering.
BY BRENNA LONG
blong@kansan.com
Old soda bottles, chunks of cardboard and a few plastic trees built a path from middle school to the University. Every year 200 middle school students participate in the Great Plains Region Future City Competition hosted by the School of Engineering.
The University sees the annual competition as a means to recruit talented students.
Alexis Jones, the School of Engineering recruitment director, said because students make decisions early on, programs like this introduce them to fields they had not considered before. The average middle school student doesn't know what engineering entails and programs like this give them an opportunity to experience it firsthand. Jones said.
Two former participants returned to the competition Saturday, this time not as nervous presenters, but as volunteers. As seventh graders, Matt Vestal, a freshman from Lenexa, and Hanna Cosgrove, a freshman from Prairie Village, participated in the competition in 2005. Vestal also competed his eighth grade year. With the competition in its seventh year, these students are some of the first participants to enter the University's School of Engineering.
"I really liked the project, so I definitely think that it sparked my interest," Cosgrove said. "It was a hands-on example of what engineers do."
The competition requires students to create a city using SimCity software, build a model and write essays about the construction of their city. In addition, the students give a final presentation to a panel of judges on the day of the event.
To prepare for the competition, students had help from their teachers, as well as an engineering mentor. Vestal and his group of 10 other students met with their mentor every other week. The mentors could point out potential issues and prepare the team for questions the judges might ask at the event, Vestal said.
"Our mentor had a lot of experience," Vestal said. "We all looked up
During Vestal's eighth grade year, his team actually won the competition, earning each team member a $1,000 scholarship to either Kansas State University or the University of Kansas. His team also advanced to nationals in Washington D.C., where they placed 13th overall.
"As a practicing engineer, it inspires me and recharges my batteries to see their childish imaginations," said Howard Lubliner, the competition coordinator.
The competition consisted of 65 teams from 27 schools in the area. Since the competition first began in 2004, the number of competitors has stayed steady, even with educational cuts. Lubliner said.
This means more students like Vestal and Cosgrove will continue to discover engineering. The melted lake Vestal made from soap and the hours Cosgrove spent on SimCity working on the pipelines played a role in becoming engineering physics students at the University.
"I feel like when you read about something or hear about something, you think about it very differently than when you actually design and build something," Cosgrove said. "And as a seventh grader that was important."
Edited by Becky Howlett
NATIONAL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHILADELPHIA - A college student returning to school after the winter break fell victim to a prank at Philadelphia's airport by a Transportation Security Administration worker who pretended to plant a plastic bag of white powder in her carryon luggage.
TSA prank taken too far for student
Rebecca Solomon, 22,
a University of Michigan student, wrote in a column for her campus newspaper that she was having her bags screened on Jan. 5 before her flight to Detroit
The worker is no longer employed by the TSA after the incident this month, a spokeswoman said.
Check out an audio slideshow of the competition at kansan.com/videos
minute of my life," Solomon wrote. "Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded with him to understand that I'd never seen this baggie before."
The worker "waved the baggie at me and told me he was kidding, that I should've seen the look on my face," she said.
A short time later, she said, the worker smiled and said it was his.
REBECCA SOLOMON University of Michigan student
"I had been terrified and disrespected by an airport employee. He'd joked about the least funny thing in air travel."
Solomon said she asked to speak to a supervisor and filled out a complaint, and during that
"He let me stutter through an explanation for the longest
when the employee stopped her, reached into her laptop computer bag and pulled out the plastic bag, demanding to know where she had gotten the powder.
In the Jan. 10 column for The Michigan Daily, she recounted how she struggled to come up with an explanation, wondering if it was bomb-detonating material slipped in by a terrorist or drugs put there by a smuggler.
process was told that the man was training TSA workers to detect contraband. Two days later, she said, she was told he had been disciplined.
"I had been terrified and disrespected
There was no answer Saturday at a telephone listing for Solomon at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. An e-mail message seeking comment from her was sent Saturday by The Associated Press, and a telephone message was left at her parents' home in suburban Philadelphia.
by an airport employee," she said. "Hed joked about the least funny thing in air travel."
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A wordsmith in the making
Alexis Smith, a junior from Olathe, reads her poems Friday, at the event Hawk and Tide, hosted by the English Department. The English Department also hosted creative writing students from the University of Alabama, who read as well.
CRIME
New Jersey corruption trial begins
ASSOCIATED PRESS
With the first trial in New Jersey's largest ever corruption probe set to begin, the public finally will get to see Solomon Dwek in action: a government cooperator who secretly recorded hours of meetings at restaurants, diners and parking lots over two years, showing religious leaders, politicians and municipal employees in various states of alleged wrongdoing.
NEWARK, N.J. — The most eagerly awaited video release in New Jersey won't be showing in theaters, but will screen exclusively at a Newark federal courthouse, starting this week.
It has been six months since the mammoth corruption bust resulted in 44 arrests. The dramatic July 23 takedown featured early morning raids from synagogues to city hall and allegations of bribes distributed in cash-stuffed cereal boxes.
Ten have pleaded guilty, and the rest are awaiting trial or in plea negotiations.
It also produced one of the more memorable perp walks in New Jersey's history: Elderly rabbis in long black coats, sweat-suited municipal employees and assorted bleary-eyed elected officials paraded in handcuffs off a fleet of buses for processing at FBI headquarters.
Prosecutors say the money laundering operations were so large they were referred to as laundromats.
Among the defendants: Three mayors, two state assemblymen and other public officials charged with corruption, prominent rabbis from Brooklyn and Deal, N.J., charged with money laundering, and in one case, a man charged with brokering the sale of a human kidney.
The first to go to trial is former Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona
But the man everyone wants to hear from is Dwek, the cooperating witness that the U.S. government is hanging almost its entire case on. Prosecutors are hoping a jury will believe a man who pleaded guilty to a $23 million bank fraud and faces additional lawsuits for an alleged real estate Ponzi scheme.
Beldini, who faces extortion and bribery charges. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday.
Dwek, the son of a prominent rabbi, was a real estate speculator before his 2006 arrest for bank fraud. As part of a plea agreement, he agreed to help the government by secretly taping dozens of meetings in which he sought to launder money from bankruptcy proceedings through Jewish charitable organizations in the tight-knit Orthodox enclave he grew up in. He also posed as a real estate developer seeking influence with public officials.
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